Different types of machines exist permitting the winding of cores intended to be integrated as a component in an electronic circuit, particularly in a watch circuit.
The coils intended for such circuits are characterized by their small size, as well as by the use of a very fine winding wire, of a diameter on the order of a few hundredths of a millimeter.
According to the prior art, whether the winding is produced by rotation of the core opposite the wire-distributing reel or by rotation of a flyer leading the wire from the payout reel onto a stationary core, the free ends of the wire at the input and at the output of the winding are either cut and left free or are led directly onto spindles where they are automatically wound in order to be taken up again later on for the following operation.
Because the wire in question is extremely fine, it will be difficult and tedious, when the ends are free, to find them again with a view to the following operation, in order to position them on soldering contact-studs, for example, or for any other operation. This delicate searching phase is generally done by hand, the operator searching for each wire with the aid of suitable instruments, tweezers, for example, before bringing said wires into position ready for the following operation. The minute detail and the attention necessary for this search, as well as the necessity of exercising only a minimum of stress on the wire owing to its low mechanical resistance, have heretofore made the mechanization and automation of this operational phase difficult.
In the case where the ends have been brought and directly wound around auxiliary spindles, taking these wires up again with a view to the later operation may prove to be delicate, for the input and output wires, drawn tight between the ends of the winding and the spindles, are hard to recover without breaking the wire; the devices foreseen for that purpose are generally complicated and not very flexible to use.
Moreover, according to certain designs for winding devices, the supports serving to hold the core during winding hide the points where the wire will come to be fixed later; it is therefore necessary to provide for an additional manufacturing operation consisting in changing the manner of holding the winding.
Hence these ways of proceeding, according to the prior art, significantly increase the cost of the finished coil.
The object of the invention is precisely, while preserving and keeping known the exact position of a sufficient length of the input and output wires of the coil and while having available a sufficient free length of each of these wires, available without its being necessary to apply to them an excessive tractive force, to be able to bring said wires, by simple mechanical and/or automatic means, into a position ready to be available for the following operation, respectively, to be soldered.
A device for holding the wire permitting the carrying out of this process also forms part of the invention. The process of the invention as well as the device associated therewith are described in the drawing, according to a possible embodiment.